and had bacterial meningitis was 477/mm3. In contrast, the median number of white
blood cells in infants who were born at less than 34 weeks’ gestation and had
meningitis was 110/mm3.Infants with meningitis attributable to Gram-negative pathogens typically have higher CSF white blood cell counts than do infants with meningitis attributable to Grampositive pathogens.Adjusting the CSF white blood cell count for the number of red blood cells does not improve the diagnostic utility (loss of sensitivity with marginal gain in specificity).In addition, the number of bands in a CSF specimen does not predict meningitis. With a delay in analysis(>2 hours), white blood cell counts and glucose concentrations decrease
significantly